Obama’s “Safe Schools Czar” Kevin Jennings

Over the past few months, a movement has been growing to expel President Obama’s “Safe Schools Czar” Kevin Jennings from his post. The effort has been led primarily by Christian groups such as Americans for Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH), MassResistance, Focus on the Family, Concerned Women of America, and the American Family Association.

These organizations and other researchers have uncovered a considerable number of alarming facts about Jennings that draw into question how he ever could have been nominated, let alone approved for the appointment.

Aside from Fox News, the major media organizations have either ignored the issue or dismissed the concerns of Jennings’ critics as a witch hunt by religious zealots. However, as in the cases of the Obama ACORN scandals and the revelations that led to the firing of “Green Jobs Czar” Van Jones, the mainstream media may not be able to keep a lid on the Jennings scandals much longer. Among the many disturbing particulars in Jennings’ resumé that call out for investigation and explanation, we find:

• “Brewstergate” — the case of a young student, “Brewster,” whom Jennings knew was having sex with an older man he’d met in a bus station restroom.

• “Fistgate” — the case in which Massachusetts public school educators sponsored by GLSEN (the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network — founded and run by Kevin Jennings) instructed children as young as 12 years old on explicit homosexual practices, including such dangerous practices as “fisting.”<

• “NAMBLAgate” — Jennings has repeatedly expressed admiration for the late Harry Hay, a member of the Communist Party and one of the most militant homosexuals of the past century. Hay was an icon and sort of “senior statesman” in NAMBLA, the North American Man-Boy Love Association, the militant pederast group.

• “QueerSchoolsgate” — Jennings wrote the foreword to Queering Elementary Education and has admitted that he developed the “anti-bullying” label as a way to present the pro-homosexual agenda as a “safety” issue; Jennings’ GLSEN brigades have subjected millions of school children to forced “queering” sessions through various GLSEN-sponsored programs.

• “Act-Upgate” — Jennings is a longtime activist in the militant homosexual group Act-Up, which broke many laws, invaded churches, and physically assaulted clergymen and Christian worshipers. Jennings is notorious for viciously smearing, sometimes in very foul language (both in his writings and speeches) Christians who disapprove of homosexual behavior. He also advocates censoring former homosexuals who warn youngsters against the “gay” lifestyle.

• “Drug-gate” — Jennings, who runs the federal Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools, has written rather ambiguously about his own drug and alcohol abuse — expressing no regrets and even romanticizing it — leaving open to question whether he is encouraging or discouraging drug use among our youth.

On October 5, Congressman Steve King (R-Iowa) became the first Member of Congress to call on President Obama to fire Jennings. King’s statement charged:

Kevin Jennings lacks the appropriate qualifications and ethical standards to serve in a presidential administration.... His life’s work has been the promotion of homosexuality, even in elementary schools, and he has demonstrated no qualifications to make students safer in our schools. Jennings is committed to the “safety” of only a narrow portion of American students, while expressing disdain for religion and traditional values. President Obama should fire Kevin Jennings immediately.

On October 15, Rep. King issued another call to the President, this time in the form of a letter signed by an additional 52 House Republicans. The letter states, in part:

As the founder of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), Mr. Jennings has played an integral role in promoting homosexuality and pushing a pro-homosexual agenda in America’s schools — an agenda that runs counter to the values that many parents desire to instill in their children. As evidence of this, Mr. Jennings wrote the foreword for a book titled Queering Elementary Education: Advancing the Dialogue About Sexualities and Schooling. Throughout his career, Mr. Jennings has made it his mission to establish special protections for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered students to the exclusion of all other students. The totality of Mr. Jennings’ career has been to advocate for public affirmation of homosexuality. There is more to safe and drug free schools than can be accomplished from the narrow view of Mr. Jennings who has, for more than 20 years, almost exclusively focused on promoting the homosexual agenda.

Media Censor Jennings Story

The Obama administration has ignored the growing clamor over Jennings thus far. It has been able to do so only because its journalistic allies in the media have continued to cover up the troubling issue. The “Brewstergate” story is a good example. “Brewster” is the name given by Jennings to a troubled boy he counseled while teaching at Concord Academy in Concord, Massachusetts. Jennings mentions Brew-ster in his 1994 book, One Teacher in Ten: Gay and lesbian educators tell their stories, as well as in a speech to a GLSEN rally in 2000. He also brings him up in two 2005 articles in publications of the National Education Association (NEA). Brew-ster appears again in Jennings’ 2006 autobiography, Mama’s Boy, Preacher’s Son: A Memoir, but with his name changed to “Robertson,” without explanation.

In his 2000 speech, Jennings says that Brewster was 15 years old when he came to him and mentioned he’d met a man in the lavatory of the Boston bus station and had gone home with him. The assumption is that Brewster had sex with the man. Jennings assumed so and advised Brewster “to use a condom.” The Brewster account brings up some crucial issues bearing on Jennings’ worthiness to hold the “Safe Schools” post. First, there is Brewster’s age. Jennings said Brewster was 15 at the time. But in 2004, this became an issue when a conservative NEA teacher contested Jennings’ suitability to receive an NEA award. Jennings then insisted that Brewster had been 16 years old, which would have made him old enough under Massachusetts law for consensual sex with an adult. And Jennings would not have been covering up a statutory rape, and would appear to be off the hook from a legal standpoint.

During the current controversy, Jennings has again claimed Brewster was 16, and seems to have proof, in that a man claiming to be Brewster has come forward and produced a driver’s license showing a birth date that proved he was 16 years old at the time of the incident. The man has not given his real name, nor has he allowed himself to be photographed or videotaped; all details on his driver’s license except for his birth date have been digitally obscured. We have no way, at this time, of verifying that the man who has come forward is indeed Brewster, or that the driver’s license is authentic. However, if we accept it as genuine, does that end Jennings legal culpability in the matter? Not at all, since, as a teacher, he was required under Massachusetts’ mandatory reporting law to report Brewster’s sexual relations with adults.

In his autobiographical Mama’s Boy, Preacher’s Son, Jennings expands on the story of Brewster, whom he has renamed Robertson:

Robertson soon told me his tale, about someone he’d met in Boston, how he thought he loved him, and how heartbroken he was that his calls never got returned. I suppressed a smile at his naivete (this won’t be the last time that happens, kid) and tried to look sympathetic about his lost true love — who I didn’t have the heart to tell him, had probably forgotten Robertson’s name by now.

Further on in the book, Jennings gives more evidence of troubling behavior by Brewster/Robertson that should have caused any teacher with common sense to have taken action. He writes:

As the fall wore on, Robertson continued to drop by my office to chat, often updating me on his latest “adventures.” Sometimes these startled me, and I began to underline the importance of safe sex to him. One day he snapped back, “Why should I use a condom? My life isn’t worth saving, anyway.”

Let’s recap: Brewster/Robertson, a 15-to-16-year-old “troubled kid” who is abusing drugs and regularly traveling unsupervised to Boston (45 minutes away) to have sex with men (at least one of whom he met in a bus station restroom), repeatedly tells Jennings of these “adventures.” Jennings knows that the boy is suffering from depression and believes that his life is not worth saving. He knows that the boy is crushed by rejection of a sex partner he thought was his true love. Jennings, who is well aware of the promiscuity of the homosexual community and how vulnerable a youngster like Brewster can be when thrown into that adult environment, can only muster a vapid warning to “use a condom.” Jennings’ own partner had just died of AIDS, and news stories of AIDS and other STDs ravaging the homosexual community were making daily headlines, but all Jennings could tell Brewster was to “use a condom.” He didn’t inform the school administration, Brewster’s parents, or any other authorities regarding the serious peril this young adolescent was in.

Responding to public pressure, on September 30, Jennings issued a statement through the Department of Education:

Twenty one years later I can see how I should have handled this situation differently. I should have asked for more information and consulted legal or medical authorities. Teachers back then had little training or guidance about this kind of thing. All teachers should have a basic level of preparedness. I would like to see the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools play a bigger role in helping to prepare teachers.

However, the Jennings statement expresses no regret, it is simply an acknowledgment that he should have acted differently. And this only after conservative activists and Fox News made the “Brewster” incident into an issue that refused to go away. But the kicker is that Jennings has turned his failure into a reason to entrust him to prepare “all teachers.”

The Intolerant Bully

For the past decade and a half, Jennings and his GLSEN brigade — with abundant assistance from the Ford Foundation, the NEA, the American Federation of Teachers, IBM, PepsiCo, CitiGroup, and other sponsors — have been transforming our schools by their very deceitful use of the “school safety” issue. Jennings and his GLSEN cohorts insist they are merely trying to make our schools safer by stopping bullying. No one wants to see children bullied, beaten, threatened, or bloodied at school; the classroom and the schoolyard should be safe sanctuaries. However, as Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council points out, the GLSEN “safety” label papers over a much more ambitious agenda. He notes:

Some might be tempted to support the “safe schools” agenda as long as it is limited to ending bullying, and does not extend to actively affirming or promoting homosexuality. However, in a 1995 speech, Jennings admitted that the rhetoric about “safety” was a political device, saying that it “threw our opponents on the defensive, and stole their best line of attack. This framing short-circuited their arguments and left them back-pedaling.” In a 1997 speech he embraced the idea of actively “promoting” homosexuality, looking forward to a day when “people, when they would hear that someone was promoting homosexuality, would say, ‘Yeah, who cares?’” And an unsigned article on the GLSEN website in 2000 declared, “The pursuit of safety and affirmation are one and the same goal.”

It is this deviousness of Jennings and GLSEN that is most alarming, especially now that they have captured citadels of power inside the massive federal bureaucracy of the U.S. Department of Education and appear to have the full blessings of the Obama White House to work their way with our children. “Tolerance,” for them, is just the opening wedge, leading to affirmation, promotion, and celebration of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) “lifestyles.”

“I don’t want to be tolerated. I don’t want to be put up with. I want to be … celebrated,” says GLSEN leader Stephen Glassman. In his book Always My Child, Jennings demands a “diversity policy that mandates including LGBT themes in the curriculum.” But Jennings, GLSEN & Co. have redefined tolerance and diversity to fit their own agenda; they have no tolerance, for example, for former homosexuals who now warn youngsters of the dangers of the “gay” lifestyle. Tolerance and diversity are a one-way street, says sex-ed traffic cop Jennings, which must always lead to an LGBT destination. “Ex-gay messages have no place in our nation’s public schools,” Jennings has declared. “A line has been drawn. There is no ‘other side’ when you’re talking about lesbian, gay and bisexual students.”

Like other leaders of the radical homosexual lobby, Jennings piously intones the rhetoric of “tolerance” and “respect” to win public acceptance of the lobby’s agenda. But he is decidedly intolerant toward Protestant Evangelicals and Catholics who oppose perversion in the classroom. Typical of Jennings’ respect and tolerance for “diversity” of opinion is this infamous comment of his in a speech in 2000:

We have to quit being afraid of the religious right. We also have to quit — I’m trying to find a way to say this. I’m trying not to say, “F - - - ’em!” which is what I want to say, because I don’t care what they think! Drop dead!

“Act Up” is one of the most aggressive and intolerant of the militant homosexual groups, alienating even many of the “moderates” in the homosexual movement with their acts of violence and their vicious anti-Christian rhetoric and actions. Jennings and his longtime partner Jeff Davis are veteran activists in Act Up. Too bad nobody questioned Jennings about any of his Act Up activities that may have violated the rights of Christians.

Jennings is listed as a financial contributor to the offensive and obscene Act Up exhibit at the Harvard University Museum entitled ACT UP New York: Activism, Art, and the AIDS Crisis, 1987 - 1993. One exhibit puts a photo of Cardinal John O’Connor, former Roman Catholic cardinal of New York City, next to a condom, with the caption: “KNOW YOUR SCUMBAGS.” In another, former President Ronald Reagan is targeted as a murderer of homosexuals. The title under his photo is, “He Kills Me.” Former President George Bush, the elder, is the subject of a poster that has “SERIAL KILLER” plastered over his forehead. Underneath in slightly smaller type is the subhead: “ONE AIDS DEATH EVERY 12 MINUTES … LIP SERVICE IS NO SOLUTION TO THE AIDS CRISIS.”

Other items in the exhibit are too pornographic to mention. However, literature, films, and graphics every bit as “provocative” as the Harvard exhibit may already be in your children’s schools, thanks to the efforts of Kevin Jennings, GLSEN, the NEA, and their allies.

— Photo: AP Images

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